When post-its are better than boys

Can I tell you how much I love my son? I gave birth to one the most amazing boy children ever to plunge neck deep into a 40-gallon container of Legos. There are days I want to just wrap him in a tortilla, dip him salsa and chew him up.

Then there are moments like this when I think he is a tool of his father’s master plan to drive me insane, because this is such a MAN moment there is no other possible explanation!

I have a nasty habit of forgetting everything what I need to get at the store if I haven’t written it down. If I don’t have my blue (or pink or yellow, whatever, it’s not color specific, I’m not THAT weird) post-it note telling me all the things I’m supposed to buy, I run the risk of getting a little too excited in Target and going berserk. Thank-you cards! Lip gloss! Converse All-Stars!

I’m getting a head rush just thinking about it.

On this particular trip to Target I was over halfway there when I realized I’d forgotten my post-it. Instead of letting my brain explode, I dig into my HUGE purse and grab my Peyton-notebook, which is a book I keep at all times because the child could have an artistic outpouring and if there is no paper and pen to be found it can lead to a catastrophic meltdown.

I hand it over to Nathaniel, who at 10, can read and write with the best of them.

“Dude, write this down.”

“Ok.”

“Toilet paper. Dog food. Toothpaste.” Then I look over to make sure he’s writing it and I see:

t paper
d food
t paste

“Nathaniel, will you know what these things are when we get there? Because I need you to know what you wrote.”

“Yeah! Toilet paper, dog food and toothpaste.”

“Okeydokey.”

I go on with the list, and we make our way to the store.

Because I’d just gone through the list both mentally and verbally, we were flying through Target with the greatest of ease. Then I figured I should check the list just to make sure I hadn’t blanked on anything.

Toilet paper? Check.
Dog food? Check
Toothpaste? Check
Wach/k/b

What the…?

“Nathaniel! Son, what does this say?”

“Ummm, I don’t know.”

“SERIOUSLY! You just wrote the list, what does that say?”

“I don’t know, you’re the one who told me what to write!”

“Don’t try to use logic on me, son, because I know I didn’t tell you anything that looks remotely like that word. Just tell me what the letters are supposed to be so I can try to figure out what we were getting.”

“W-A-C-mumble mumble mumble.”

“C-what?”

“It’s either a k or a b”

“Nathaniel, what word do you think is spelled like this? Does it LOOK familiar to you AT. ALL.?

“No, not really, no clue.”

“Did I tell you we need a wackabee (pronunciation of WACKHB)?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Dude, do you even know what a wackabee is?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need one.”

“If you can point me to a wackabee, ANYWHERE in this store, I’ll buy 10 of them.”

At this point, the Grandma behind us is about to bust her supportive hose cracking up behind us. We give up.

Neither of us has any idea what we were supposed to buy. We still don’t know what a wackabee is. The world may never know.

12 Comments on “When post-its are better than boys”

Hey Peyton,
Just gotta tell you I love the hat! And I reckon I’d have a bemused expression on my face as well if I’d had to sit in a trolley and listen to that wachy(!) conversation between my mum and brother in a supermarket. Who’d have ’em eh!
Transatlantic love to all of you. x
Dawn.

Based on the fact that I’ve helped raise our son over the years, I feel that perhaps an explanation is due.

Taking a page from Steve Martin, years ago, while you were sleeping, I’d whisper to Nathaniel in his crib that when the moon was high and the storms threatened, he should spell things incorrectly and incoherently. I even made him memorize the code with which to scramble the letters to ensure proper insanity and confusion had occurred.

And so, I can translate the note with 100% certainty.

He wrote down the word “wacb”.

However, hidden within this hand-written word are the letters, “S, W, N, A, C, B, I, H, and K”. So if you consider those letters, and apply the shifting by three parsecs of the decoder ring that I made him memorize, and stand on one foot, you get the starting point of the first all carrier pigeon race. Once you get to that location and conclusion at the same time, you should then turn the decoder over while looking due East, and apply the reverse logic of a penguin, in such a a manner that you return to a new place.

Still with me? Great.

Now then, if you pick a number between 2 and 9 and multiply it by 9, you’ll have a garage with no gas. But if you take that 2 digit number and add the digits together, you end up with an odd number. Subtracting 5 from that number will give you an even number. So if you take that number and apply it to the alphabet, it will give you the first letter that is hidden within the coded message! So pick a country that starts with that letter! Got it? Great!

Next, take the second letter in that country’s name and pick a land mammal that starts with that letter, and its color.

So now, while riding your gray elephant from Denmark to the place of the penguins…ok, so I can’t continue on with this.

I think you see where he got it.

What you asked him to write down was a wachine. At Target, I believe they have them in the frozen produce section.